I was playing on a game Saturday. My house AC died and about 2 hours later my whole computer died. The sides of the case by the power supply were HOT. I took case off and blew it out and tried restarting. I got it to power through but when the lights inside finished the sequence it died again.
i thought Power supply this is an almost 5 year old home built machine.
It is a 2.0 processor I forget the exact info I remember something about Family build something in the system info Never thought to write the stuff down in case this happened DUH
i do think it is a ASUS.
It has 2 HDs in it one 40GB one 120GB
A Radeon 9550 with 256 MB memory on it
a gig and a half memory
running Windows XP pro the 2nd thing and is updated as far as updates

I had a guy come by and try a power supply on it The one he tried was smaller then the one on it (Unsure of that means anything or would effect anything) I have a 300 watt Pentium 4 ready in it now he tried a 200 Watt.
It did power but went straight into BIOS and said something about the CMOS speed was reset and needed to be set and then died again.

So i am gong out on a limb and GUESS this is a little more than a Power Supply issue??

the fact that the case was 'HOT' is extremly concerning and id hate to think what the actual components of your computer were like. im guessing you havent got very efficient cooling in your computer. do you keep the case in an enclosed space? does it get hot often?

id recommend reseting the BIOS manually. just make sure you discharge yourself of static by touching a grounded object (try the metal pipe at the bottom of a radiator)

open your computer (take the power chord out, of course) and search on the motherboard for a large 2cm diameter pill battery.

take it out but dont lose it.

if you can see two metal contacts, reach in VERY CAREFULLY with a metal object (i used tweezers) and connect the two contacts for at least five seconds.

if you cant see any contacts, or if youd rather stay on the safe side, just keep the pill out for 1 minute before putting it back.

this will reset the motherboard settings to the default. maybe that will fix your problem

if your scared of messing ur computer up further, get your pal to do it.

the fact that the case was 'HOT' is extremly concerning and id hate to think what the actual components of your computer were like. im guessing you havent got very efficient cooling in your computer. do you keep the case in an enclosed space? does it get hot often?

id recommend reseting the BIOS manually. just make sure you discharge yourself of static by touching a grounded object (try the metal pipe at the bottom of a radiator)

open your computer (take the power chord out, of course) and search on the motherboard for a large 2cm diameter pill battery.

take it out but dont lose it.

if you can see two metal contacts, reach in VERY CAREFULLY with a metal object (i used tweezers) and connect the two contacts for at least five seconds.

if you cant see any contacts, or if youd rather stay on the safe side, just keep the pill out for 1 minute before putting it back.

this will reset the motherboard settings to the default. maybe that will fix your problem

if your scared of messing ur computer up further, get your pal to do it.

good luck

yup, this is definintely what you need to do, again make sure you get proper cooling in that system. if it gets warm on a regular basis your cpu needs more airflow as well as the power supply. sometimes adding more fans can help, maybe a new heat sync as well. good luck.